


taking the long way home

by yugto



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Ramen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 16:12:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1394002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yugto/pseuds/yugto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They make an odd pair, sitting in the corner of the dingy ramen bar on the outskirts of town.</p>
            </blockquote>





	taking the long way home

**Author's Note:**

> Kagerou Daze V -the deceiving- spoilers ahead. Beware. 
> 
> Takane Enomoto got back her body after two years and said she just wanted to [eat cha shu men](http://furiwokaaan.tumblr.com/post/81162011733/takane-tho-she-got-back-her-body-and-shes-just). I identify with her on a spiritual level. Cha shu men is _good_.
> 
> Warning for vomit. It's not described in detail, but if that sort of thing squicks you out, I figured I'd warn you.
> 
> [edit 04.06: Upon reading the actual [translated version of chapter 9](http://fuyuyuu.tumblr.com/post/81508712418/kyou-to-iu-hi-no-rojou-ni-te-part-2-2), I realized this story was Jossed to heck. Still, hope you enjoy.]

They make an odd pair, sitting in the corner of the dingy ramen bar on the outskirts of town. She's a short nineteen-year-old, a pair of old and battered headphones hanging around her neck, dressed in hospital scrubs and flip-flops, with a mess of tangled black hair separated into two long pigtails. He's a lanky sixteen-year-old, with fashionable clothes (compared to hers, anyway) and short blonde hair, a strange look in his eyes, a carefree grin on his face.

At any other time, this would be strange: Shuuya Kano and Takane Enomoto had never had a full conversation as themselves before this night. Yet here they are, perched on high metal chairs, staring at each other across a slightly sticky metal table as two steaming bowls of ramen are placed before them.

"I want cha shu men," she'd said, upon exiting the experimental facility. "I know a place," he'd replied, and so they'd ended up here at this hole in the wall. It's late at night, and the restaurant is quiet, save for the soft sounds of a radio playing pop hits in the kitchen, the click of their chopsticks, and the slurp of the noodles. The shop's owner bustles about the counter, cleaning up and getting ready for any potential customers, glancing periodically at the unlikely couple in the corner.

Takane attacks her meal with gusto, shoveling food into her mouth like she hasn't eaten for years. (To be fair, she hasn't.) Her chopsticks are nothing more than a blur, ferrying noodles from the bowl to her mouth at a speed even Konoha would be proud of. In contrast, Kano uneasily picks at his food, keeping a chary eye on the girl in front of him. Takane gets the feeling he's never said so much about himself to anyone before ( _although_ , a tiny voice whispers in the back of her head, _that story could have been a lie, too._ )

She's not entirely sure if she can trust the boy in front of her. She's still not entirely sure how this happened; under the table, her heels knock together as her body tries to make sense of the fact that she once again has feet. Adjusting to sensing things once more, she feels hypersensitive to everything around her. She feels the cold metal of the chair beneath her, the wood of the chopsticks between her fingers; tastes cha shu men, for the first time in years; smells the faint scent of miso ramen wafting from Kano's bowl.

Shielded by her bangs, she looks up from time to time, trying to connect the tense boy in front of her to the little boy who entered her target shooting stall on that day so long ago, to the child she saw trailing after Kenjirou on occasion, to the carefree boy she saw lounging around the Dan's base, to the Ayano Tateyama she thought she knew during her last days on earth. It's a tough connection to make. Each persona seems so different that it's hard to believe they're all tied together in the boy in front of her.

(Then again, his power is deceiving. Perhaps it's not so difficult to believe as she initially thought.)

They sit in silence, eating ramen together. Takane picks out the pieces of cha shu pork, pops them into her mouth, and revels in the feeling of eating again at last. She wonders, idly, if this was how Haruka felt every time he came out of the hospital, eating real food again instead of the gruel they were served whenever they were sick.

The owner stops by to pick up their bowls. He's a friendly old man, graying and balding, an apron tied around his portly waist and a cordial grin on his face. He nods approvingly at the bowls he picks up. Takane's is completely empty, while Kano's has a thin layer of broth and noodles covering the bottom. "Isn't it a little late for you kids to be out?" he asks.

There's no reason to be worried. He's nothing but a concerned old man, probably with grandchildren of his own, but Takane freezes. All she has to say is three simple words: _no, we're fine_. But the words ball up in her throat, form a dam at the back of her mouth; normally, she'd have a witty response ready to go at the drop of a hat, but it's so strange talking to someone outside the Mekakushi Dan—someone that can actually _see_ her! someone who isn't staring at the screen of a cell phone!—that she's left completely speechless.

Kano intervenes smoothly, deceiving powers at work again: "Ah, you see, mister, this is my cousin! She's just gotten out of the hospital, and she said she wanted ramen _now_ —" he pauses and rolls his eyes, as if to say _sick people, you know how it is_ — "so we came here!"

"Ah, I see. I'm glad you're feeling better!" the owner says to Takane, and picks up the bills Kano hands to him. "You kids take care, now." He waves cheerily at them as Takane staggers to her feet and out the door, with Kano following a few steps behind.

He came up with a lie so quickly, as expected of the boy who held the Deceiving Eyes, but the deceit at this point makes it just that much harder to believe everything she's heard tonight. 

Takane's stomach roils, unused to holding so much food; judging by the various lines she pulled out of her arms, she'd been staying alive through some sort of an IV drip. Now, the food in her stomach sloshes back and forth, and attempts to climb up her throat. Finally, in an alleyway halfway back to the Mekakushi Dan's base, Kano holds back her tangled hair while she vomits into a trashcan.

"Nervous about going back there in your old body?" he smirks, and she suppresses the urge to punch him in the stomach.

"Don't you know you shouldn't feed a starved person rich food right away?" she grumbles, and wipes her mouth off on the corner of her sleeve. It doesn't matter if it's ruined. If she has any say in this, she's never wearing this damned outfit again. She's only still wearing it because her old uniform that they found in the facility was entirely too small, and the only thing that still fit her was the set of white headphones that sat atop the neatly folded clothes.

"Hey, hey, that wasn't rich! Yours was only 500 yen," he protests good-naturedly.

Rolling her eyes at the terrible joke, she lurches off down the street, Kano trailing behind her. It's strange seeing the world with her own eyes, and not through the camera of a cell phone. The height is different, and her feet are still unsteady on the ground. Her legs ache, long-unused muscles groaning in pain as she plods on. Walking for herself, instead of piggybacking on someone's technology, is more than a little bit exhausting. Maybe she shouldn't have been so hard on Shintaro.

Somehow, she manages to totter the rest of the way back to the Mekakushi Dan's base, where she halts right on the doorstep, hand raised to knock on the door. Konoha—no, Haruka will be in there. How can she go back there in her old body when he's still trapped in his android form? She feels guilty—she should have done more to find Haruka's body, to find some way for him to have the same luck that she did. Standing there on the doorstep, she's frozen for an agonizing minute. What is she going to do?

"C'mon, let's go," Kano says with unexpected gentleness, and opens the door.


End file.
